Things I don't remember
by Trinimex
Summary: A story about Elena's diary entry, after she found out she had Alaric erase her memories and love for Damon, (epi s6:4)


This is my take on what Elena's diary entry would look like after she found out she used to love Damon, ep s6:4

I love TVD, but I don't own any part of it :(

...

Dear Diary.

Today I found out that I used to be in love with Damon Salvatore.

That's right, Damon Salvatore.

The same Damon Salvatore, who used and abused Caroline, ripped into Bonnie's neck and almost killed her, and actually did break my brother's neck killing him ( temporarily thanks to the Gilbert ring ). Yup him... I used to be in love with him.

If you are wondering why I am only just learning about this, it's because I had Alaric erase my memories and love for Damon via compulsion.

Confused? Yeah well so was I when I first found out, which is why I am writing in you now; because I need to clear my head and make sense of everything I learned today.

So I guess if I have to tell this story I should start at the beginning.

Today Stefan left Mystic Falls and went back to his pretend life in Savannah. Since I did not believe what he was doing was healthy, I decided to tag along with him, so that he could prove to me he was doing ok and was truly moved on.

We spent the rest of the morning in Savannah, where he told me about the new life he built for himself. After the tour we ate lunch at the local diner where Stefan showed me how pretending to be someone else could be fun.

He pretended he was Stefan Cooper, and proposed to me, Elena Williams, his pregnant girlfriend and I admit, it had been fun. So much fun, that I walked out of that diner, believing that Stefan really was ok, and that he was over the loss of his brother.

Had it not been for the fact that I forgot my jacket, I might have never found out what a complete lie that was.

When I went back into the diner to collect my jacket, I found Stefan on the floor, willingly getting his ass kicked by some local townie. It turns out, that far from being ok, Stefan was a mess and was still grieving the loss of his brother, so much so that he deliberately got into fights just to feel something other than the pain of losing Damon.

Well as you can probably guess, seeing Stefan like that really upset me. Even though Stefan and I broke up two years ago, I still care a lot for him and consider him one of my friends. So as a friend, seeing him hurt like that, hurt me. Especially when I believed the person he was hurting over was not worth the pain. So I basically told him so... that Damon was not worth the grief.

Now I know that sounds totally bitchy considering Damon was Stefan's only brother and had been for the last 150 years, but in my defense whenever I thought about Damon, all I felt was anger and hatred towards him. In my mind, Damon was a self-serving vampire psychopath who got off on torturing people. I could not understand why a person as kind and loving as Stefan would waste time grieving over the loss of someone so horrible as Damon.

In any case I should not have said Damon was not worth it to Stefan. I was wrong and I guess Stefan thought so too, because the next thing I knew he was telling me how I should not judge him on how he was dealing with his grief, because unlike me, he could not just forget about Damon.

Obviously I had no clue what Stefan was talking about since as far as I knew my memory was clear about who Damon was and what he did.

But I was wrong, so very wrong.

When I demanded that Stefan explain his comment about me forgetting Damon, Stefan let the whole truth come out about how I used to be in love with Damon, and that losing him had messed me up so much that the only way I could cope was to have the memory of Damon erased from my mind.

To say I was shocked, would be an understatement.

Me - in love with Damon? It had to be a joke. But it wasn't.

According to Stefan, I loved Damon so much, that when he died, part of me died too, and I did not know how to go on living without him. So I had Alaric erase every good memory of Damon from my mind, turning Damon into a monster, so that I would not grieve the loss of him.

I did not want to believe Stefan's words but I knew him well enough to know that he would not lie about me and his brother, so I ended up leaving Stefan there in Savannah and racing back to Whitman College to talk to Alaric about what Stefan told me.

When I got to Alaric's, he had nothing to say in his defense. He told me that it was I who sought him out and begged him to compel me. And just in case I did not believe him, he provided me with a box of mementos from my relationship with Damon, as well as a letter from my former un-compelled self to my now clueless self.

Diary, up until I saw that box, I still held out hope that this was all a joke... but like I stated already- it wasn't. In the box had items of clothes, Damon's jacket for instance, which would not be much in terms of evidence had it not been for the strong scent of something familiar and comforting on it. The box also contained pictures of Damon and I together. Again I wanted to deny them, but the pictures were clearly us, and we were clearly in love. The last piece of evidence, the one that gave me undeniable proof that I had once loved Damon was the letter the old me wrote.

In the letter, the old me basically confirmed everything that Stefan had told me. That I had loved Damon with a passion that consumed me. And that when he died he left a void inside of me too deep to ever be filled again. In the letter, the old me told the new me that she had loved Damon so much that she just did not see an end to the pain that was left when he died. Life for her had been hopeless.

So she did the only thing she could do. She had her love for Damon erased from her memory. She had wanted to give me a chance to live in hope again. She said she wanted me to live again, even if it was without the one who defined me. At the end of the letter she mentioned that if I wanted to, Alaric could compel my memories of Damon back to me, but she begged me not to choose that option. She said that if I had any hope for the future then I was already better off than she was, and that I should just remain that way.

To tell you the truth Diary, I did not know how to respond to the old Elena's request to remained compelled. In all honesty it scared the crap out of me.

I mean- I am Elena Gilbert; the grief expert. I have lost more loved ones than anyone else I know, yet I always manage to find hope and happiness again. So how was I not able to do this with this one man.

It made no sense.

I lost my parents in a car crash- that I survived. Losing them hurt like hell, but somehow I got by. Then I lost Jenna, and I thought the pain would never end- but it did. Loosing John, and Isobel did not hurt as much as my parents and Jenna had- but I did grieve my birth parents, especially since John died so that I could live, and Isobel practically burnt to death right in front of me.

But if all that was not enough- I had to bury Alaric, and then my brother- the only family I had left. As far as I can remember- nothing had hurt me more than loosing Jeremy. I literally had to flip my humanity switch just to deal with Jeremy's death. It had been horrible, and I had done horrible things during that time- yet in the end I managed to find a reason for living and loving again- and eventually I turned my humanity switch back on. So there you have it diary. I have lost, my parents, Jenna, John, Isobel, Alaric, Jeremy and even Bonnie- who had been my friend since I was 5. Each of those deaths had hurt me- but I still managed to keep moving forward- and found peace and happiness again.

So how was I not able to do this with Damon.

What kind of love did I have for him that I, Elena Gilbert could not deal with his death? What kind of hold on my heart did he have- that I became hopeless without him. In the letter the old me said that the pain of losing my soul mate had turned me into a monster. What kind of love is that- that without Damon... I became a danger to people around me, even with my switch on. I just don't understand it. How is it possible that of all the people I have lost before- Damon is the one person I could not let go or move on from.

Tell me- what kind of love did I have for him? How deep... how intense...how all consuming was that love that I could live with the death of my parents, and Jenna and even my brother, but I could not live with the death of Damon Salvatore.

I don't know. All I know is that a love like that scares me.

When I read the letter, a part of me that I did not even know existed started to ache inside of me. I felt it clawing from the inside of my heart demanding to be known. I knew then... even without my memories that everything the old me said in that letter had been the truth. That I loved Damon... that I probably still loved Damon, and that when he died... part of me died too.

It was that ache in my heart that made up my mind for me about whether or not I wanted my memories back. If I could feel that ache in my heart without my memories, then I can only imagine what my heart would feel like if I got my memories back. The pain would kill me.

So when Alaric asked me what I wanted to do, I closed the letter, placed it back in the box and gave the box back to Alaric. I told him to keep it safe for me in case I ever wanted to look at it again, but we both knew I was lying, and that I would never want to see that box again.

I don't want my memories back. I don't want to be hopeless. I don't want to be half alive. I don't want to live my life without my soul mate. I don't want to be a danger to the people around me. But more than anything else, I don't want to be in love with Damon Salvatore; the one man I cannot live without, the one man I could never be with again.

Without a doubt, loving Damon, and being loved by Damon had been the best thing that ever happened to me. I know this because losing Damon to death had definitely been the worst. I can't put myself through that kind of pain again.

So Diary, here I am. Back in my dorm room. Writing this entry , knowing that this is the last time I am ever going to mention Damon and my love for him in this book.

Damon was my boyfriend.

I loved him.

And he died.

Losing him all but killed me.

So I had the memory of him erased so that I could live.

In my case it is better to have never loved at all, than to have loved and lost. Especially if that love lost was Damon Salvatore.

Elena.


End file.
